3.
CKNOWLEDGEENT
T
his book is a result of encouragement and inspiration received from
friends, colleagues, and clients who have seen me speak either in
public or private events on various marketing topics, mostly about
the Internet. Some of these special people have provided inspiration to
me in the recent past and some in many years past. I wish to acknowledge
those who have directly inspired me in this book.
To Debra Curtiss for telling me (as opposed to merely suggesting) to write
this book a er hearing me speak on social media marketing.
To Ed Yourdon for being my rst employer and for being a ne example
of a man of intellect, innovation, and of family character.
To Murry Shohat for being a special part of my extended family and for
his invaluable wisdom, counsel, and loyal friendship.
To the late Dr. Richard Gerson for being generous with his time and tal-
ents and giving me inspiration to be both an author and a speaker.
iii

4.
cknowledgements
To Steve Tingiris for showing me how to be a passionate entrepreneur
unafraid to take calculated risks, and for being a loyal friend.
To Ray Rodriguez for being like a brother to me my entire life and for his
kick-in-the-pants advice many years ago to become an entrepreneur.
To Chuck Palm for being my podcasting partner, friend, and humorist.
To Tom Voiland for being an example of loyalty, character, and faith.
Each of these special people has provided me inspiration, motivation, and
accountability. Watching them do life in their unique way has been in-
valuable to me.
ere are three people who provided extremely valuable contributions
to this book. I’m very grateful to Mike Volpe,1 V.P. Inbound Marketing
at HubSpot, for so willingly writing the foreword. I truly enjoy his mar-
keting insights. anks to Joe Pulizzi,2 CEO of Junta42, for his advice
and praise on the back cover. anks to Gary Katz,3 CEO of Marketing
Operations Partners, for his praise on the back cover. Gary also authored
the chapter on Marketing Operations, o ering you great insights into an
emerging aspect of marketing, which seeks to make Marketing Opera-
tions a pro t center, not a cost center.
Other people I want to thank include Newt Barrett of SucceedingToday.
com for his early endorsement of this book on his blog. Many thanks go
to Shaun Pope for his contribution to the chapter on video. Also, many
thanks to Lola McIntyre, a successful realtor in Indianapolis; Victoria
Edwards of Linkshare, and author and marketing consultant Becky Cor-
tino, whose online friendships and encouragement have meant more to
1 Mike Volpe: http://www.mikevolpe.com/
2 Joe Pulizzi: http://blog.junta42.com/about.html
3 Gary Katz: http://www.google.com/proﬁles/mopartnersceo
iv

5.
cknowledgements
me than they know. Many o ine relationships have contributed too with
special thanks to my loyal friends and colleagues Ron Licata and Clint
Babcock.
I also want to thank my loyal team at Find and Convert for their patience
with me while I wrote this book, not to mention their valuable ideas and
tireless commitment to making my web marketing agency a trusted re-
source to our clients. anks to Michelle Berdeal, Charles Eidschun, Bil-
lie Ginther, Dianna Kersey, and Jackie Weber.
When I conducted research to showcase people and companies succeed-
ing in social media marketing strategies, I found some terri c examples. I
speci cally wanted to showcase nontraditional businesses whose brands
are not household names. I’m very grateful for the availability and coop-
eration of the following people to tell me their stories so I can share them
with you. anks to Mike Volpe of HubSpot; Brent Britton, attorney ex-
traordinaire; Rick Short, marketing communications director at Indium
Corp.; George Wright of Blendtec; Marc Mandt and Linda Olson, co-
founders of WOMbeat!; Kim Albee, CEO of Genoo LLC; Chris Gri th,
Keller Williams Realtor; Michelle Riggen-Ransom of BatchBlue So ware;
Christopher Penn of the Financial Aid Podcast; Wendell Brock, founder
and CEO of De Novo Strategy; Stacey Monk, CEO of Epic Change; Justin
Levy of Camino Argentinean Steakhouse; and Carrie Young of Socialcast
for referring me to the NASAsphere pilot.
Special thanks go to Jay Winchester, president of the Winchester Group,4
for doing the rst round of edits and helping me to restructure it, making
it a better book for you. anks to Hayley Love from Wheatmark Pub-
lishing for the detailed nal editing and excellent suggestions that com-
pleted this book.
4 Jay Winchester: http://www.winchestergrouponline.com/
v

6.
cknowledgements
My biggest thanks go to my loving family. I thank my wife, Jean, and my
kids, Amanda and Derek, for their moral support while I wrote this book
and balanced it with running a business and being a husband and a father.
eir patience with me during this time is very special. To say thank you
to my loving parents seems so inadequate. ey taught me the meaning
of life, love, hard work, and character.
Ultimately, I attribute all gi s and inspiration to God. My faith is strength-
ened daily through his word as illustrated by my favorite scripture in Ga-
latians 2:20.5
5 Galatians 2:20: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=galatians%20
2:20&version=31
vi

9.
FOREWORD
by Mike Volpe, V.P. nbound Marke!ng, HubSpot
N
ew technologies o en drastically change society. What people
sometimes don’t realize is that o en it takes a long time for so-
ciety to gure out what the new technology can enable. When
a technology is rst introduced, it is o en seen as something di erent
or novel, not something that will have a large and useful e ect on main-
stream society.
Telephone technology was rst developed in the 1840s and perfected
in the 1870s, but at that time, telephones were leased as a point-to-point
connection between just two parties, not as part of a shared network con-
necting everyone. Only in the early 1900s did the telephone really start
to resemble the devices and networks we know today. It took about two
decades of experimentation for this new technology to reach its full po-
tential.
e Internet has changed the way we live our lives, consume informa-
tion, and purchase products. But again, it took time for society to under-
stand how the technologies—speci cally the experiments of trailblazers
and entrepreneurs—could be used to society’s best advantage. And it
ix

10.
Foreword
took time for marketers to understand how this technology could change
marketing.
Starting in the mid-1990s through about 2001, there was a huge boom
for the commercial Internet, mostly related to the ability of people to con-
sume online information, as well as to buy consumer products through
ecommerce. During this time, marketers started to look at the Internet as
a new lower-cost and more targeted method of selling products. However,
marketing professionals started to apply their old marketing models and
mind-sets to the Internet. Online ads were like print ads. Direct mail and
cold-calls became email blasts. Sure, there were some changes—online
campaigns are easier to track and analyze—but the mind-set and basic
marketing assumptions did not change. My job as a marketer was still to
spend money on ad space next to something people wanted to read, try
my best to distract them from that media with my advertisement, and
then get them to take the action I wanted. e media had changed, but
the marketing really had not. e crash of the stock market bubble and
the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001 sent the economy into a decline
and dampened marketers’ enthusiasm for how the Internet might posi-
tively a ect business and society.
But the Internet did not fade away. In the shadows of a burst bubble,
people started to use the Internet in a new way. WordPress blogging so -
ware rst appeared in 2003, Facebook was founded in 2004, and YouTube
was founded in 2005. Normal, everyday people were starting to use the
Internet to not just consume information, but also to produce, publish,
share, and discuss information among each other. Along with this new
use of the Internet came other technologies—accelerated growth of caller
ID, spam and ad-blocking so ware, TiVo and the digital video recorder
(DVR)—giving consumers increasingly more control over the informa-
tion they chose to consume and how and when they consumed it. As
of April 2009 Facebook has more than 200 million members, YouTube
delivers more than 5 billion video views a month, and Technorati has
indexed more than 130 million blogs.
People use the Internet much di erently today than they did ten years
ago. But, most marketers are still plodding along, trying to apply their old
x

11.
Foreword
mental and business models to the new medium. Many marketers have
an outbound marketing (interruption-based marketing) mind-set to the
Internet, and it is not working. e harder they try to apply outbound
marketing principles on the Internet, the worse the results. Many market-
ers therefore are frustrated with the Internet as a marketing platform.
People have become accustomed to controlling how and when they
consume information. Why watch ads on TV when I can fast-forward
through them using my DVR? Why watch something I don’t enjoy on one
of my two hundred cable TV stations if there are more than one hundred
thousand videos uploaded to YouTube each day? Why read the main-
stream news from the New York Times when I can subscribe to the exact
topics I want to read using Really Simple Syndication (RSS) on my com-
puter and mobile device? Why get interrupted by telemarketers when I
can use caller ID and let it go to voicemail? Why get distracted by email
blasts when I can interact with the people I trust on Facebook and Twit-
ter? Why read white papers and industry reports when I can download
them to my iPod as podcasts and listen to them in the car while driving
to and from work?
Many marketers today are still trying to apply their old way of out-
bound marketing to the new media, and they are failing. Successful
marketers have changed the way they think. ey are using inbound mar-
keting strategies to attract customers to their business without distracting
or interrupting them. ese inbound marketers are getting higher return
on investment (ROI) than most would dream of. is new paradigm of
inbound marketing is what Marketing 2.0 is all about.
My relationship with Bernie Borges is a product of this new market-
ing paradigm. I rst met Bernie online. In fact, my friendship and profes-
sional relationship with Bernie is one of many new relationships I have
made in the past few years using tools such as Facebook, LinkedIn, my
web log (blog), and Twitter. Bernie and I had discussed lots of topics—
brand-building online, search engine optimization, blogging, and online
videos—and built a relationship without ever meeting each other.
When I met Bernie in person for the rst time at the inaugural In-
bound Marketing Summit in 2008, where he was a speaker, I remem-
xi

12.
Foreword
ber shaking his hand and already feeling a deep connection. is wasn’t
the normal conference meet-and-greet; Bernie and I already knew each
other. I didn’t really know what he looked like, save for some online pro-
le pictures, and I didn’t know what his voice sounded like. But I had a
deeper understanding of who he was because we had shared information
about ourselves and discussed numerous topics online. In essence, our
relationship began before we ever met in person.
Bernie is one of a new breed of marketing professionals who is blaz-
ing the path for how the Internet is powering this new paradigm in mar-
keting. Even before this book is published, a Google search for Bernie
Borges returns results for Bernie’s blog, his LinkedIn pro le, his Facebook
pro le, his Twitter pro le, his podcasts, an interview he did with another
blogger, a video of Bernie’s presentation at the Inbound Marketing Sum-
mit, and presentations that Bernie has posted on Slideshare. ousands of
people listen to what Bernie has to say through Facebook, Twitter, Linke-
dIn, his blog, and his podcasts. ousands of links on the Internet point
to his website. Bernie doesn’t pay for Yellow Pages ads or direct mail to
build his Internet marketing business. Bernie builds his presence online
and lets his customers come to him. Bernie is just one man, but through
inbound marketing strategies, he has built a larger presence for himself
than has ever been possible before. Turn the page and read Marketing
2.0 to learn how Bernie and others like him have changed the way they
think about marketing and get results no longer possible through out-
dated marketing principles. Marketing 2.0 is a book about getting results
by embracing these inbound marketing strategies and principles. e
technologies mentioned are enablers, not the answer. e answer starts
with an understanding of the possibilities and guidelines to use them to
achieve great results.
xii

13.
NTRODUCTION: Y
RADITIONAL MARKETING
OEN’T ORK NYORE
T
here is a gap out there in the market. e gap exists between sellers
and buyers. Sellers are using shouting tactics in attempt to reach
buyers, and it just doesn’t work well anymore. e outbound mar-
keting tactics that worked in the 1980s and 1990s just don’t work anymore
in the late rst decade of the new millennium. Buyers have too many l-
ters available to them. Buyers can limit the content they consume through
RSS subscriptions, use caller ID to lter out unwanted phone calls, record
television programs and skip through the commercials, and si through
unwanted mail. Marketers play a numbers game, celebrating 0.5 percent
response rates to shouting style marketing campaigns. is form of mar-
keting is not just ine ective from an ROI perspective; it’s plain ine ec-
tive.
What buyers want is a relationship. ey want to know you and your
people. ey want to know that you’re listening to them, and they actually
want to engage you, the seller, in conversations. Why? Because they can,
and because you can, and because you should. If you don’t … well, you
just may lose your buyer.
1

14.
Bernie Borges — Marketing 2.0
e initial inspiration for this book came primarily from speaking
engagements, where my audiences typically comprised small and me-
dium-size business (SMB) executives. e purpose of these presentations
was to discuss the evolution of Web 2.0 and the e ect of social media
marketing on business. Each presentation provided a brief high-level
overview of the history of the Internet from a technology perspective, as
well as the conventional Internet marketing strategies currently in use,
such as search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, permis-
sion email marketing, and banner advertising. e presentation then
transitioned to a discussion of marketing opportunities made possible
through the evolution of tools and technologies on the social web. ese
tools include blogs, wikis, podcasts, social networking sites, bookmark-
ing sites, video, and photo sharing sites. I also discussed the technologi-
cal, demographic, and cultural evolutions that have made these tools so
popular.
Each presentation usually begins with my asking the audience for a
show of hands in response to a few basic questions in order to gauge the
makeup of the audience. e audience size for most of my presentations
ranges from 25 to 125. e questions I usually ask (along with the answers
I receive) are:
• “How many of you are with a company the size of (less than 100,
100 to 250, 250 to 500, more than 500)?” e vast majority of at-
tendees are with rms with less than 500 employees, many with
less than 100 employees.
• “How many of you actively read a blog?” Usually about one-third
raise their hands.
• “How many of you actively maintain your own personal or com-
pany blog?” Usually two to ve people raise their hands.
• “How many of you have a pro le in a social network such as
LinkedIn, Facebook, or MySpace?” More than half usually raise
their hands—most are on LinkedIn.
2

15.
ntroduction: hy raditional Marketing oesn’t ork nymore
• “Of those who have a pro le in a social network, how many of
you actively participate in the social network at least once per
week and consider this time well-spent?” Unfortunately, very
few hands usually go up to this question. In other words, many
people have completed a pro le in a social network but they don’t
do much with it.
• “How many of you feel that social networking or blogging or any
type of social media marketing has the potential to be a valuable
aspect of your marketing strategy?”
I usually get an interesting response to this last question. Usually a
few hands are raised, maybe in the 10 percent to 20 percent range of the
audience. But, judging by the body language and blank stares in the au-
dience, I can see that most in the audience don’t have good answers to
this question. Perhaps they don’t know how to answer it, or maybe they
haven’t given it much thought. Or, maybe they don’t know much about it.
Initially, I was greatly puzzled by this response and it started me think-
ing … that’s how this book came into being.
My goal is to help you—the business owner or marketing executive
in a small or medium-size business—understand what marketing on the
social web is, what it means within a business context, and how it can be
a valuable component of your marketing strategies. As you read, consider
the marketing mind-set: how do successful marketers on the web think?
What assumptions do they make? What principles do they use? How do
they engage with their target market? How do they produce results? How
do they measure results? While this book is written primarily for the SMB
executive, nonpro ts can bene t as well. Any reference to business goals
should be replaced by your speci c goals. Since I am a blogger, I wrote
this book in plain English in a somewhat conversational tone. I wrote a
book I would want to read. I tried to connect dots for you. My hope is
that you will take away from this book sensible and actionable ideas and
strategies that will have a valuable impact on your business. If you are in a
larger company, I believe the principles in this book apply to you as well,
3

16.
Bernie Borges — Marketing 2.0
depending on where your company is in the adoption of social media
strategies.
Another part of the inspiration for this book comes from my own
active participation in social media marketing. I run an Internet mar-
keting agency, so it should come as no surprise that I have an interest
in all things marketing on the web. at said, I spent more than twenty
years in corporate jobs in technology sales and marketing, and I don’t
consider myself a web geek. I am more of a business–marketing strate-
gist who happens to be in the Internet marketing business. I do admit
that I am very encouraged by how many businesses around the world
are actively using social media to engage their customers in community
and conversations on the web. However, I also am discouraged by how
few SMBs have yet to embrace the social web at the time of this writing.
ere are many case studies regarding the e ective use of social media by
larger, well-recognized brands such as Apple, Best Buy, Cisco, Comcast,
IBM, and Oracle. I encourage SMB CEOs and their marketing and sales
managers to embrace the social web as three things: a culture, a mind-set,
and a platform. Marketing on the social web is not a technology strategy,
although technology plays an important role. e social web allows any
business of any size in any location to reach the people they desire to
reach and build solid relationships with them. O en, these relationships
evolve o ine into traditional and productive relationships. e social
web is a place to relate to others, not a place to launch shouting-style
campaigns, although campaigns are possible using the social web. e
social web is a place to listen because people are talking—and they may
be talking about you, your products, your team, your competitors, and
ideas that could someday become your future products. e social web is
a mind-set. And any business that doesn’t understand the mind-set is at
risk of being le behind or using it inappropriately, producing negative
results. Understand that e ective marketing on the social web requires
a revisit to your organization chart. e people you need to implement
your social media strategy may or may not be the people in your current
org chart. Your current boss may not embrace the social web, in which
case you may need to assess whether your career is at risk.
4

17.
ntroduction: hy raditional Marketing oesn’t ork nymore
is book is for people who don’t mind admitting they are just get-
ting started in social media marketing, and who want to learn how to
develop a strategy and learn what mistakes to avoid. You don’t need an
advanced degree to understand Marketing 2.0 concepts. However, you
do need to be willing to let go of old paradigms. You may need to stretch
yourself and your organization in ways that may be uncomfortable at rst.
e examples I have provided of companies that range from individuals,
small start-ups, to midsize companies that use the social web success-
fully in their marketing strategies will help you realize its potential. is
book was written during the height of our most recent global economic
decline. Headlines are currently dominated by credit nancial crises, fed-
eral bailouts of huge banks, and massive company layo s. Yet the SMB
marketers who have successfully implemented social media marketing
strategies have survived if not thrived.
I’ve also provided a resources section that points you to excellent
books and web logs (blogs) to help you gain other valuable perspectives
and insights regarding social media marketing from other thought lead-
ers. I strongly urge you to use these valuable resources.
I don’t mind telling you that I struggled on a title for this book.
roughout most of my writing, I was planning to title it Social Media
Marketing for the Rest of Us because it’s not written for the Fortune 1000
brands, but rather for SMBs and nonpro ts. I changed the title to Market-
ing 2.0 primarily because social media is still an evolving term for many in
the SMB world. I really want you to grasp that this book is about a mar-
keting mind-set that involves producing meaningful content and build-
ing relationships on the web. It just so happens that the web has become a
social gathering place where relationships and authenticity win out over
shouting and deals of the month. e web has also gone from being a at,
one-dimensional platform to a multidimensional, multisensory experi-
ence.
I really want to stress the importance of having a mind-set for mar-
keting on the web that requires and facilitates changes in the way you
think. As Mike Volpe described in the foreword, most marketers have
a history of pushing out a message (outbound marketing) aimed at dis-
5

18.
Bernie Borges — Marketing 2.0
rupting the target audience. For decades we got away with that. Sorry, but
that just doesn’t work anymore. e sooner you accept that, the sooner
you can enjoy the results available in Marketing 2.0. e consumer (your
buyer) is now in control. She knows where to go to nd the products and
services she needs and is willing to talk to people who have something to
say about your products, your business, your people, and your competi-
tion. What she hears from them is going to in uence her buying decision,
and you cannot and will not control that—unless you are engaging the
consumer in authentic relationships on and o the web. Only then can
you have a positive in uence on how she thinks about you.
At some point in this book, I may o end you a little, not with o ensive
language but rather with strong and blunt sentiment. I don’t sugarcoat my
sentiments, and I o er no apology for that. My goal is to shake you up
and get you thinking di erently so your competitors don’t eat your lunch.
You’ll see examples in the case studies of companies that are competing
e ectively against competitors many times their size by building relation-
ships with customers online, giving them great content, and listening to
and engaging them through the social web.
ere is one truth you simply can’t deny: social media is growing at
an amazing rate. e Universal McCann Report: Power to the People, So-
cial Media Tracker: Wave 31 o ers some amazing statistics worth noting.
is report, completed in March 2008, was compiled through interviews
of 17,000 Internet users across twenty-nine countries. Here are a few
summary statistics:
• 57 percent of Internet users have joined a social network
• 73 percent have read a blog
• 34 percent post opinions about products and brands on blogs/
social media
1 Universal McCann Report: Power to the People, Social Media Tracker: Wave
3: http://www.universalmccann.com/Assets/2413%20-%20Wave%203%20
complete%20document%20AW%203_20080418124523.pdf
6

19.
ntroduction: hy raditional Marketing oesn’t ork nymore
• 36 percent think positively about companies that have blogs
• 83 percent have viewed video on the social web
• 184 million people worldwide actively maintain a blog
In the 2008 Technorati Report: State of the Blogosphere,2 Technorati
surveyed 1.2 million bloggers around the world who had registered with
its service. Here are some summary statistics:
• 133 million blogs are registered with Technorati
• ese blogs are from sixty-six countries in eighty-one languages
• Blogs have representation in top 10 website lists in all key cat-
egories
• Blogs are now a part of mainstream media
• Bloggers are savvy and sophisticated in driving tra c to their
blog
• Bloggers are meticulous about tracking statistics about their
blog
• Bloggers are successful—they are achieving career enhancement
opportunities including speaking engagements
• e majority of bloggers are advertising on their blog, producing
an income stream for themselves
• 90 percent of bloggers say they write about the products and ser-
vices they love or hate (take note of this!)
2 Technorati: The State of the Blogosphere: http://technorati.com/blogging/
state-of-the-blogosphere/
7

20.
Bernie Borges — Marketing 2.0
BusinessWeek
In May 2005, BusinessWeek featured a cover story titled, “Blogs Will
Change Your Business.”3 e article focused on how blogs had transi-
tioned from the Internet fringe to the business mainstream. Blogs were
no longer just a tool for individuals to rant about their favorite recipes,
movie stars, or political viewpoints. Businesses were deploying blogs, and
people were visiting them, reading them, and participating in the blog
conversations. Brands awakened to the fact that bloggers working within
a corporate setting had become in uential. Prospects were visiting cor-
porate blogs to read what they couldn’t read on websites and gaining in-
sights from bloggers who had something provocative or insightful to say
about vendors, their products, and their employees. e voice of the blog
was being heard loud in the business arena. BusinessWeek’s cover story
included a subtitle: “Your customers and rivals are guring blogs out. Our
advice: catch up … or catch you later.”
In May 2008, BusinessWeek did something they had never done be-
fore. ey wrote a cover story as a follow-up to a previous cover story
(May 2005). is story, titled, “Beyond Blogs,”4 opened with this sentence:
“ ree years ago our cover story showcased the phenomenon (blogs). A
lot has changed since then.” Is that ever an understatement! e May 2008
story discussed the evolution of the social web to include platforms such
as YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and sites such as Digg, Stumble-
Upon, and Flickr. e article pointed out the risks of employees wasting
time hanging out with friends on the Internet or leaking secrets on social
networking sites. And it also highlighted the power of the social web to
facilitate connections with resources in order to “assemble global teams
for collaborative projects, and connecting with people capable of opening
doors for new deals and strategic opportunities.” It also pointed out that
“the resume is 140 characters,” referring to the explosive popularity of
3 BusinessWeek: Blogs Will Change Your Business: http://www.businessweek.
com/magazine/content/05_18/b3931001_mz001.htm
4 BusinessWeek: Beyond Blogs: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/
content/08_22/b4086044617865.htm
8

21.
ntroduction: hy raditional Marketing oesn’t ork nymore
Twitter. BusinessWeek admits this story’s appropriate headline is, “Social
Media Will Change Your Business.”
Marketing on the social web is not appropriate for all businesses, but
probably is for most. If you’re in an industry where your customers don’t
use the web, or you sell to a very small, nite customer base, the social
web is not necessarily a viable place to market. However, using the social
web for your research and education is strongly recommended.
In the end, I will judge the success of this book primarily not by how
it sells but by feedback from the community. e social web will allow me
to hear readers’ reactions to and opinions about what I’ve written, and I
will engage them in conversations online. What will matter most to me is
the feedback regarding this book’s e ect on your willingness to embrace
the social web as part of your marketing strategy. I invite your feedback at
my blog, http://www. ndandconvert.com/blog/.
e tools and technologies I discuss in this book evolve. Some may
cease to exist or be made obsolete by others. is book isn’t about Face-
book, LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube, though I cover them extensively.
is book is about how to embrace the most viable tools and platforms to
bridge the gap between you (the seller) and your buyers.
I truly hope Marketing 2.0 has a positive impact on the way you think
about reaching your customers, the employees you hire, and your future
products and services. Most of all, I hope you embrace the two core con-
cepts—the pillars—of Marketing 2.0: a content marketing strategy and
a focus on building relationships through social media. e tools and
technologies discussed are not the answers but the enablers. If Marketing
2.0 becomes a mind-set in your organization, you will bridge the buyer–
seller gap, compete e ectively, win market share, grow, thrive, prosper,
and possibly reinvent your business along the way, if that’s what it takes.
Marketing 2.0 o ers you endless possibilities if you allow yourself the op-
portunity to engage, listen, and take action on the social web.
9

22.
LOING TE OO ETWEEN
MARKETING AND SALE
I
always nd it interesting to observe the wide spectrum of attitudes to-
ward marketing among businesses. On one extreme, some businesses
don’t believe in marketing at all. ese businesses are usually sales-
driven, using old-style sales organizations that make cold-calls, attempt-
ing to ll their pipeline, and living by the numbers that say for every ten
prospects in the pipeline, two will close (or whatever the ratio is).
Other businesses believe in marketing, measuring their marketing
budget as a percentage of total revenue. e key di erence is these busi-
nesses believe that their marketing e orts contribute to lling their sales
pipeline, and therefore they continue to invest in marketing activities,
even in hard economic times.
Before getting into marketing on the social web, I will discuss strate-
gies for closing the loop between marketing and sales, whether you use
o ine or online marketing strategies. roughout my career, I’ve had to
measure the relationship between marketing and sales. You might say it’s
in my blood.
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losing the oop between Marketing and Sales
he Purpose of Marke!ng
Many will argue with me when I say that the sole purpose of marketing
is to set up the sales department to do their job as e ciently as possible.
In other words, marketing’s role is to tee up sales for success. If you cringe
when reading this, give me a chance to make my case.
Fundamentally, there are two basic types of marketing: online mar-
keting and o ine marketing. When we speak of online marketing, we
refer to activities that include your website, marketing your website
through organic search engine optimization, and paid search marketing
such as pay-per-click advertising (also called SEM), directory listings,
and banner campaigns. Online marketing also includes email marketing
and electronic newsletters. And, of course, online marketing includes ev-
erything discussed in this book characterized as social media marketing.
O ine marketing includes telemarketing/cold-calling, direct mail,
and advertising in various media channels such as print, radio, television,
and billboards. O ine marketing also includes trade shows and use of
promotional products such as pens, cups, and other trinkets that help
brand and promote your business and may also include contests and pre-
mium giveaways.
Where does public relations t into these two categories? In short,
while it straddles the line between o ine and online marketing, in my
opinion, it leans more toward online marketing. Historically, PR has
been a function in many marketing departments that has been sta ed
separately from the main marketing department. e primary reason for
this separation is PR’s editorial nature. e PR department’s primary role
in most businesses used to be to get ink. David Meerman Scott’s book,1
e New Rules of Marketing and PR, does an excellent job of explaining
how the world of marketing and PR has shi ed from communicating to
a select few who control the communication channel—media journalists
and industry analysts—to marketing directly to your target audience and
building relationships with them through social media. Scott also points
1 The New Rules of Marketing and PR: http://www.davidmeermanscott.com/
books.htm
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Bernie Borges — Marketing 2.0
out some of the di culties in measuring social media when old style met-
rics are applied.
So let’s agree on two points as this chapter unfolds. First, most busi-
nesses continue to use a combination of online and o ine marketing
strategies. ere are always exceptions to this, and some businesses use
more of one over the other. However, it can be argued that shi ing the
mix between online and o ine marketing is always worth considering.
In fact, that is what this chapter is about.
e other point is that, in most businesses, a shi toward more online
marketing bene ts them in the long run. I admit that I am a little uneasy
making this statement across the board because online marketing can
bene t some businesses more than others depending on their respective
industries. If you operate a chain of funeral homes, your online market-
ing strategies may not be as important as if you run a so ware company.
In the former, there probably isn’t a large community of people talking
about it. at said, the power of online word-of-mouth marketing can
positively a ect even the most obscure industries. See examples in the
case study section including an example of a midsize manufacturer of
kitchen blenders. No matter how strongly you agree or disagree with this
point, I contend that if a business is doing little or no online marketing,
it is missing an opportunity. If such a business has many competitors,
and those competitors are using e ective online marketing strategies, that
business will eventually be damaged in some way by those competitors.
Closing the loop between marketing and sales is essentially a combi-
nation of justifying the role and expense of marketing and measuring the
results. ere are four key principles involved in this process.
he Four Pillars of losing the oop
In any business, there are essentially four pillars that must be considered
and used when building a bridge between marketing and sales. ese
four pillars are: relational, strategy, best practices, and measurement. Let’s
look at each one.
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losing the oop between Marketing and Sales
Relational. I put this one at the top of the list because too many marketing
departments, whether they employ one or one hundred, either miss this
altogether or minimize its importance. An intellectual understanding of
the relational factor, rather than a casual intuitive understanding of it, can
dramatically improve marketing and sales results.
In any business, there are core functional executives. In most busi-
nesses there is a chief executive o cer (CEO), a chief nancial o cer
(CFO), a chief information o cer (CIO), a marketing executive, a sales
executive, and at least one other executive responsible for running the
delivery functions of the operations. Regardless of the titles in your busi-
ness, here is a basic lesson in organizational structure. If this lesson seems
remedial to you, that’s not my point. My point is that our role in market-
ing must be aligned with the vision and goals of the key executives in the
business. In some businesses, however, alignment with the CIO is not
needed, while in others, not being aligned with the CIO is the kiss of
death. So replace these titles as needed to t your business; these are the
people in your company who are critical for alignment.
I’ll single out one title to illustrate this pillar further. However, be sure
to consider the roles of the executives in your business and how these
principles apply. Let’s single out the top sales executive. If your role is
the top marketing executive, being aligned with the top sales executive is
mission critical. In fact, if you’re not aligned with sales, you won’t survive.
Let’s look at two examples.
In the rst example, the marketing executive and sales executive are
very well-aligned. e sales objectives are clearly stated at all levels. e
main objective is not just growing revenue, but is also clearly de ned as
growing market share for a speci c product line that enjoys market lead-
ership. e opportunity to dominate in this category is readily apparent,
so the sales infrastructure is aligned organizationally to attack this market
segment full force. e sales team needs strong brand-building and door-
opening marketing strategies with clear messaging that helps position the
business as the market leader. e sales and marketing executives collab-
orate to design strategies addressing this goal. All resources are march-
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Bernie Borges — Marketing 2.0
ing to the same sheet of music. e marketing and sales executives meet
o en. eir o ces are near each other, and they frequently eat lunch to-
gether. Even when one of them is on the road, they are in constant con-
tact with each other using a variety of communications methods. eir
attitudes toward each other are more than just courteous and respectful;
there is a humble recognition that they each require the other’s contribu-
tions in order to succeed. So they work very closely together to achieve
their common goals.
Unfortunately, real life sometimes creates scenarios where there may
be alignment between sales and marketing, but the respective executives
responsible for these functions don’t get along or ever see eye to eye. If
they are both competent and mature adults, they can and should agree to
disagree on certain details, but they must march together toward achiev-
ing the company’s objectives. e realities of company politics can some-
times even determine if that company is driven by marketing or sales. If
the company is sales-driven, marketing’s role may become subservient to
sales. Or the situation might be reversed, with marketing exerting control
over sales. Even in such disparate political realities, the marketing team
can still produce stellar results—but only when healthy executive align-
ment exists. O en, alignment issues are not limited to just one execu-
tive. Typically, the CEO is the critical executive with whom others seek to
align themselves. In any environment, a clear understanding of the CEO’s
mission and goals is crucial to closing the loop between marketing and
sales.
A common mistake made by many marketing executives is being too
closely aligned with their immediate superior, whether it is a middle man-
ager or a top executive. At the same time, they don’t align with other key
executives whose in uence and decision-making matter to the success of
the business. For simplicity’s sake, I’ll use the sales role to illustrate this
point. If a marketing executive is aligned with the immediate boss, but
not aligned with the sales executive, it creates a potentially dangerous and
highly political situation. Even if the immediate boss is the CEO, not be-
ing aligned with the top sales executive is still very risky. If the marketing
executive is rolling out new strategies including new social media plans
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losing the oop between Marketing and Sales
and he or she has support from the boss (CEO or otherwise), but the
top sales executive doesn’t understand either what’s being done or why,
that marketing executive is taking a dangerous risk. Don’t ever assume
that all is well just because your immediate superior is on board with
your marketing plans. e truth is that if you are not aligned with the top
sales executive, your actions—no matter how correct or e ective—may
be helping you write your own pink slip. Eventually, a situation may arise
where it’s obvious to the sales executive—and probably other in uenc-
ers in the organization—that there is a substantial disconnect between
your e orts and his requirements. If that sales executive ever needs to
provide a justi cation for not making his numbers, you could be creating
a convenient excuse. Even if you are not at fault and such an accusation
is made, the lack of proper organizational alignment becomes a smoking
gun.
In both of the above examples, I’ve provided mostly political factors
for alignment. e point is that few factors are more essential to being
able to close the loop between marketing and sales than ensuring the
proper relational alignment in your business. Since a Marketing 2.0 strat-
egy requires such a paradigm shi for most businesses, alignment with
key executives is not an option.
Strategies. e strategies you de ne should start with a clear understand-
ing of the behavior of your target market. In Marketing 1.0, you were
taught to de ne and understand your target market. In Marketing 2.0, it’s
not enough to understand who that is. You must know much more about
that market. To know and understand its behavior means you know where
the people in that market spend time, with whom they spend it, and what
their interests are. e way you learn these things about your target is
not through surveys of data that are at least twelve months old when you
read them. Instead, you learn what you are required to know by engag-
ing them in online relationships where you can learn about them every
day in real time. Getting instant feedback from your target audience on a
daily or hourly basis dwarfs any value inherent in the antiquated survey
model. Sure, some surveys may have value, but the best way to under-
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Bernie Borges — Marketing 2.0
stand the behavior of your target is to engage it daily, taking its tempera-
ture throughout the day by using social marketing strategies online.
Your strategies must include very clear messaging. Sometimes the
most broken aspect of a business’s marketing is its message. And it starts
internally. If you ask twenty people in your business to describe your
company and products, and you get een di erent answers, you know
you have a message problem. Get your message straight internally, and
then put strategies in place to communicate that message to your markets
on a consistent basis. And if your market tells you unequivocally it doesn’t
understand your message, go back to the drawing board. If your CEO
dictates the marketing message, and it doesn’t work, do your best to cra
a new message based on the resultant market input. e easiest way to
sell your CEO on the new message is to remind her that the people buy-
ing your products are sending a clear signal: it’s your message, not your
product, that’s broken.
Understand your company’s strengths and weaknesses. Don’t develop
marketing plans that play right into your competitor’s strength if you have
an inferior product or an inability to compete. Leverage your strengths
while minimizing your weaknesses. is is yet another example of how
proper alignment is so important. For example, if your sales executive
isn’t on board with your marketing strategy, step back and reassess your
plans. Don’t continue rolling out plans that set him up to fail. You’ll look
like a fool in the process.
Understand the di erence between “A” opportunities and “B” op-
portunities. As you put your marketing plans together, make sure you’re
developing plans that produce truly meaningful sales opportunities. In
social media marketing, you could produce interest in a part of the busi-
ness that is not as pro table or as meaningful to other parts of the busi-
ness. Again, this issue comes full circle to being properly aligned.
e strategies you develop should be de ned in writing. Strategies
are similar to objectives; they are not tactics. A strategy may read some-
thing like this: “Positioning our company in the market as innovators
and thought leaders in _( ll in the blank)_ so that our sales team will
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losing the oop between Marketing and Sales
be well-received when making appointments.” at’s a clear statement of
strategy.
De ning the tactics that will achieve this strategy is extremely im-
portant. A clear tactical example aimed at achieving the above strategy
statement may read something like this: “We will achieve this strategy by
participating in online communities where our customers and prospec-
tive customers participate, listening to their main issues, and developing
white papers that address their needs. We will market these white papers
through banner ads and select social websites, as well as on our website.
We will optimize organically for keywords based on extensive research.
We will distribute news releases on our initiatives around these topics and
set up blogs using internal subject matter experts. When we exhibit at
industry trade shows, we will blog about it three months in advance, and
tell our Twitter community that it can expect to meet us there to discuss
certain topics and engage us in workshops and other venues.” All of these
tactics are written in support of the strategy. Remember—both the strat-
egy and the tactics must be properly aligned with the key stakeholders to
ensure a successful execution.
As you roll out your strategies, make sure you have the resources to
pull them o . If you are diving into social media marketing for the rst
time, start slowly—especially if you are the only one in your company
who is blogging or Twittering or whatever. Get buy-in for the resources
you need to roll out the next phase of your social media plan. Social me-
dia marketing takes time to develop and measure. Without the proper
resources (and alignment), you can fail.
Consider marketing strategies correlating to your long-tail markets.
e long tail pertains to very speci c market segments usually de ned
by three or more words. If you sell to speci c market segments, clearly
de ne them in your messaging strategy. Don’t use broad terms like “so -
ware” when you can more speci cally de ne it as “project accounting
so ware for o ce furniture dealers.” Long-tail marketing can be very ef-
fective because of the economies a orded to us on the web, coupled with
the behaviors of your buyers who are looking for products according to
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Bernie Borges — Marketing 2.0
their long-tail needs. Make sure you are in alignment with stakeholders
on your long-tail strategies.
Best Practices. e reason best practices exist in any industry is because
someone gured out how to do something well and they wrote it down.
Best practices usually emerge a er considerable collaboration and trial
and error. Here are some best practices in social media marketing for you
to consider. Your industry may o er others.
• Eat lunch with your stakeholders. While some may not consider
this a best practice, I do. I’ve stressed the importance of align-
ment throughout this chapter. Find the equivalent of eating lunch
with your most important stakeholders in your business such as
a standing weekly one-on-one phone call to review progress and
issues.
• Content is king, queen, prime minister, and president! Produce a
lot of content. Don’t limit the content format to the written word.
Produce photos, video, podcasts, wikis, blog posts, newsletters,
white papers, blue papers, purple papers, et cetera. Okay, so I got
a little carried away. I’m stressing the point that producing a lot
of good content is one of the most e ective ways to market in
Marketing 2.0. Let your content be your marketing!
• Understand your competitors. Know everything about them.
Know their executives, how they think, where they go, what they
do, what they talk about, and how they compete. Sun Tsu wrote
the famous book e Art of War.2 is book was written around
600 BC. It was translated to many other languages and to this day
is used as a model for military and business strategy. At its core,
the book stresses the importance of understanding your compe-
tition and developing plans to defeat your competitor’s plans. Sun
stresses that your best-laid plans may not succeed if you don’t re-
act to the reaction of your enemy. e same thinking applies in
2 The Art of War: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_War
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losing the oop between Marketing and Sales
business: know your competition, understand how they operate,
and develop strategies to defeat their strategies.
• Test, measure, and revise o en. I am a huge fan of characterizing
a marketing plan as a test. When you test something, it is implied
that you will be measuring results to determine its success, as
well as determining next steps you should take, if any. When you
start your new social media plans, test them, measure results, and
make revisions according to what you learn. If you get buy-in
from your stakeholders to test something such as a Twitter strat-
egy, you gain their agreement to try it. I recommend you clearly
discuss the risks and rewards you may experience from your test.
When you test new plans, you must be prepared to measure and
report the results, and be prepared to revise or possibly abort
the plan. Be careful to get buy-in for a reasonable testing period,
which is usually measured in months, not days or weeks.
• Don’t be afraid to fail. If this sounds bizarre, move to Silicon Val-
ley, where many entrepreneurs feature their failures on their re-
sumes as if they were badges of honor. is might seem a little
extreme for most of us, but the point is that if you test new mar-
keting plans and you fail, you will learn something from that ex-
perience. Assuming you were wise enough to test a marketing
plan that didn’t risk the future of the company, you can probably
leverage what you learned. For example, you could test a new blog
strategy where you have four blog hosts, each one with di erent
topics according to their subject matter expertise. You might go
into it expecting two of the four to be very popular and you turn
out to be half right. e surprise is that the two you didn’t ex-
pect to garner much of a following turned out to be much more
popular than the other two. Now, based on the failure of the two
unpopular blog topics, you should examine your existing alterna-
tives: discontinue all four blogs; replace the blog hosts with other
writers; or spin o a new blog focused on the two popular topics.
e key here is that whenever you fail—and you will—learn from
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Bernie Borges — Marketing 2.0
it and take decisive action. Meet with your stakeholders to dis-
cuss openly what you learned from your failure. If the plan was
positioned properly as a test with buy-in from your stakeholders,
the postmortem discussion should be well-received and agree-
ment on your next steps should also be relatively easy to deter-
mine. By the way, be sure you position the next steps as another
test. If it also fails, you’ll be glad you did.
Measurement. Now we come to a subject marked by struggle and con-
troversy for many in marketing: how do we measure the results of our
social media marketing e orts? As marketers embarking on social media
strategies, we want to measure as much as we possibly can. Ultimately,
our desire as marketers is to close the loop between our marketing activi-
ties and sales results. In other words, the best possible scenario is to be
able to associate each sale with one or more marketing activities in order
to justify the marketing activities and their associated budgets. e extent
to which we can measure is determined at least in part on the size of our
budget and the resources we have at our disposal. In most cases, success
means we get to keep our jobs in marketing in order to keep the process
going. If we are able to clearly demonstrate a solid connection between
marketing activities and sales, we may also get to increase our budget
and/or sta .
You should seek to measure the following factors: tra c, buzz, leads,
and sales. I’m sure there are other elements of the plan you can measure
in your business. Take these ideas and apply them to your business to help
measure the things you must in order to achieve your objectives.
• Tra c. Hopefully, measuring website tra c is something already
familiar to you. If you use website analytics or stats-tracking pro-
grams, you should be accustomed to measuring and analyzing
the tra c visiting your website. You should already be studying
the keywords that drive that tra c, the average bounce rate from
your website, and the bounce rate of your keywords. Bounce rate
refers to the rate at which visitors leave your website without vis-
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losing the oop between Marketing and Sales
iting any other pages besides the initial page they visited. You
should also be tracking which search engines and other referring
sites drive tra c to your website. When you implement a social
media strategy, you can measure referring sites from social me-
dia properties such as social networks, Twitter and blog posts. As
you see tra c increasing to your website from social media sites,
you are starting to measure results. Measuring the keywords that
drive tra c to your website is another key metric to follow. If
previously your company name was the most popular keyword
search resulting in tra c to your website, or there have been few
other keywords responsible for driving tra c, your social me-
dia strategy can result in an increase in tra c from other desir-
able keywords. By producing content with your most important
keywords, you can drive tra c from those keywords and see the
increased visitors in your website analytics. If you experience an
increase in sales activity correlating to your social media strategy,
that’s a clear indicator of success.
• Buzz. Some say it’s di cult to measure buzz. e truth is that
it all depends on your budget. When measuring buzz, I like to
balance qualitative elements with quantitative ones. You can cer-
tainly measure how many times your name or company name
is mentioned online through various tools ranging from (free)
Google Alerts to (fee-based) tools such as Radian6. However, one
of my favorite ways to measure is through conversations. When
you get unsolicited feedback from your community about what
you’re doing, that’s buzz. When people compliment you or give
you word-of-mouth advertising based on your content and social
marketing activities, that’s buzz. What’s that worth? Who knows?
All I know is that I’d rather have buzz than not have it, especially
when it’s manifesting for the right reasons. If your sales team has
an easier time getting appointments or nds that its sales cycle is
shortened, and you can trace these things back to the buzz you’ve
created, that’s tangible ROI.
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Bernie Borges — Marketing 2.0
• Leads. Leads are one of the most desired outcomes of any mar-
keting activity. In social media marketing, producing leads is an
attainable outcome. If you’re producing great content in your
community and you’re driving more tra c either to your web-
site or to a landing page, you can produce more leads. If you’re
producing good buzz and you’re sending out emails with a call to
action to your community, you can produce leads. If your blog
is growing in popularity and more people are moving from your
blog directly to your website, you can produce more leads. If you
produce webinars that feature good content in social media, you
can produce more leads. e point is that social media marketing
combined with lead-producing marketing tactics is very measur-
able.
• Sales. Finally, we come to the holy grail, the object of all your
e orts. Admittedly, measuring sales by tying them back to so-
cial media marketing is not always an easy thing to measure.
ere are many dependencies for accurate measurement of the
sales tied back to social media marketing. ey include company
size and budget, how long the company has been implement-
ing social media marketing strategies, and frankly, the quality
of the company’s content. Another factor is how good you are
at getting engaged in online communities. Using tools such as
HubSpot and Eloqua, you can measure sales tied to social media
marketing plans. Another less scienti c approach, but nonethe-
less a viable one, is to measure the growth rate of sales before
you implemented your social media plans and compare it to the
growth rate a er the implementation. Additionally, consider that
Marketing 1.0 strategies are becoming increasingly ine ective.
So if you measure how you were producing sales using Marketing
1.0 strategies compared to Marketing 2.0 strategies, you should
be able to discern a measurable di erence. Also, you can ask your
customers in both online and in o ine conversations to delin-
eate the factors in uencing their buying decisions. You are likely
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losing the oop between Marketing and Sales
to learn that some of the factors include your content, as well as
your activities in social media communities.
Closing the loop between marketing and sales is the ultimate objec-
tive of any marketing executive. Sometimes our raises, bonuses, and even
our jobs depend on our ability to accurately measure the results of our
marketing e orts. For decades, businesses have conducted marketing
activities with little to no ability to measure either their e ectiveness or
ROI. In this chapter, I have attempted to provide both qualitative and
quantitative guidelines that can be applied in your business to close that
loop, measure online marketing success or failure, and give you guide-
lines for action steps based on what you measure.
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MARKETING 2.0
T
he 2.0 concept is worth discussing. e existence of 2.0 implies
there was once, and might still be, a 1.0. e leap from 1.0 to 2.0 is
an order of magnitude or more. It is far more signi cant than go-
ing from 2.0 to 3.0 or from 3.0 to 4.0. A 1.0 to 2.0 leap is metaphorically
monumental. Here are some examples of leaps from 1.0 to 2.0:
World 1.0 was once believed to be at.
World 2.0 pushed that belief into obsolescence when it was proven that
the world was actually round.
So ware 1.0 was installed from a disk or tape.
So ware 2.0 isn’t installed at all. You access it and run it from the web.
Encyclopedia 1.0 was purchased as a een-volume set of textbooks (with
some obsolete content the moment it arrived).
Encyclopedia 2.0 is accessed on the web and is always current because it’s
constantly updated.
Music 1.0 was purchased on vinyl, then on tapes, and then on CDs.
Music 2.0 is downloaded from iTunes and other music-sharing sites.
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Marketing 2.0
Video production 1.0 was strictly the domain of Hollywood.
Video production 2.0 is now the domain of anyone with a digital cam-
corder and access to YouTube.
Worldwide sales 1.0 was only achievable by large companies with world-
wide manufacturing and distribution infrastructures.
Worldwide sales 2.0 is achievable by companies of any size—and even
individuals—that understand the value of online marketing and out-
sourced relationships, facilitating worldwide manufacturing and dis-
tribution.
ese few examples set the stage for discussing how Marketing 2.0
represents a fundamental shi from Marketing 1.0. Let’s see how.
If we characterize Marketing 1.0 as being intrusive, interruptive, and
a style of one-way shouting at our customers (outbound marketing), we
can characterize Marketing 2.0 as being about conversations, collabora-
tion, communities, and word of mouth (inbound marketing).
I like to boil down Marketing 2.0 to two pillars: content marketing and
relationship-building (on the web).
But Marketing 1.0 is still prevalent worldwide. One of the most bla-
tant examples of traditional Marketing 1.0 is the television commercial.
e painful truth is that commercials are intrusive. To rub salt in the
wound, television commercials are even louder than the regular telecast
because marketers know that their viewing audience usually leaves the
room for a bathroom or kitchen run during most commercials, so they
amplify the volume of their ads. is example—and there are many oth-
ers; if you don’t believe me, just go to your mailbox to see more—makes
the point that conventional Marketing 1.0 is not only intrusive, but also it
is strictly one-way communication.
With the advent of social media where communities are formed,
opinions are shaped, and marketers who understand this phenomenon
are e ectively participating in creative ways, the old style of marketing
is rapidly becoming a dinosaur. For proof, just look at the state of the
mainstream newspaper industry. ey are on the decline industrywide
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Bernie Borges — Marketing 2.0
while their online content counterparts are on the rise. According to the
Audit Bureau of Circulation1 among more than 500 newspaper’s week-
day circulation was down 4.6% and Sunday circulation fell 4.8 percent.
Each of the large mainstream news media—CNN, the Wall Street Journal,
Forbes, and BusinessWeek—have thriving businesses online. ey each
have invested signi cantly in infrastructure and marketing in their on-
line properties. And with the green movement, it’s only a matter of time
before the print versions of each of these publications become relics of a
distant past. Even if you live in a metropolitan area such as New York City
and ride the subway with your favorite newspaper, you’ll someday read it
on an electronic device similar to Amazon.com’s Kindle. e Kindle is the
rst digital reading device. Our grandchildren will learn about newspa-
pers in history class while consuming all their content on digital devices.
is transition has already begun in our lifetime. Do you remember the
typewriter? If you do, then you get my point.
Marketing 1.0 is characterized as a marketer’s attempt to interrupt
our lives with their message, hoping that a small percentage of us will re-
spond. Let’s review some of the most common methods of Marketing 1.0
and how we can consider repurposing these strategies using a 2.0 mind-
set:
• Trade shows. At these events, we set up elaborate displays of our
wares and strive to tell prospective buyers about our products. We
o en engage in creative, loud, and bizarre antics to rise above the
noise surrounding us (that we helped create) and to get noticed
by the crowd in hope that a subset of the people we encounter will
become interested in our products. Some of the most meaningful
conversations that take place at a trade show are those that occur
o the exhibit oor over co ee or in a private suite where smaller
groups come together. Bucking the trend, many marketers pur-
posely choose not to exhibit at industry trade shows, instead opt-
ing to rent private suites to set up private conversations. is can
1 Audit Bureau of Circulation Report: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/28/
business/media/28circ.html
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Marketing 2.0
be a very e ective, alternative approach to traditional trade show
marketing. ese private conversations are far more productive
than the shouting that takes place on the oor. rough the use
of social media, a 2.0 mind-set can engage people before, during,
and a er the trade show. Prior to the event, communicate to your
online communities the interesting and value-laden topics you’ll
be discussing at the trade show. Be sure to invite them to engage
with you. O er them content that improves their lives or work
in some meaningful way, then invite them to learn more about it
at the trade show. Use a medium such as Twitter to provide real-
time streams of your content directly from the show oor. Today,
many marketers with a 2.0 mind-set exhibit at fewer trade shows
now due to the e ectiveness of other marketing channels includ-
ing virtual trade shows held online. ere are still trade shows in
each industry that are very worthwhile. Your trade show ROI will
be more e ective, however, when you engage the online commu-
nity before, during, and a er the event.
• Advertising. In Marketing 1.0, we deliver a one-way message
through various advertising channels: television, radio, print, and
even the Internet. I’m not against advertising. Advertising will
live on. However, the contemporary marketer understands that
the role of advertising is di erent today. Depending on your in-
dustry, advertising is meant to create two things: awareness and
di erentiation. Frequently, the person who responds favorably to
your advertisement uses the Internet to learn more about you, ei-
ther by visiting your website, conducting research, contacting his
online community to ask about you, or all of the above. is being
the case, the role of advertising has shi ed from a medium o en
credited with driving buying decisions to a medium limited to
creating an impression of your brand. Essentially, advertising has
been relegated to brand development with the balance of the buy-
ing process being in uenced by communities and word of mouth,
both of which can occur online and o ine. Today’s consumer or
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Bernie Borges — Marketing 2.0
buyer has access to so many online tools and communities that
e ective advertising actually serves to help the buyer conduct his
due diligence. Advertising that tries to close the deal usually fails.
Another way to look at the role of advertising is to acknowledge
that buyers are evaluating you, so your advertising should encour-
age them to complete what will hopefully be a favorable evalua-
tion of your company, your products, or your services.
• Telemarketing/Telesales. We intrude on our prospective custom-
ers with an unwelcomed phone call, frequently interrupting
their dinner, or the middle of their work day, and we deliver our
pitch. We may even try to disguise it as a survey or some other
seemingly friendly dialogue. Even worse, we sometimes start the
call with a pre-recorded message and then force the recipient to
wait for a live agent. Countless business-to-business sales orga-
nizations still employ people to make phone calls all day long.
ey have targets or quotas specifying the number of calls they
must make each day, such as one hundred calls in a day, target-
ing ten connects and developing two leads. eir calls are fre-
quently monitored and timed and usually measured strictly by
the numbers. It can be a high-pressure environment. As a means
of protection from unwanted calls, most businesses have phone
systems with caller ID, ensuring that calls are screened either by
a gatekeeper or the phone system. Making cold-calls to gener-
ate sales opportunities is a dying breed of marketing because the
mathematical odds of cold-calling success are so stacked against
the caller. It is hard to justify it any longer. Still, thousands of
businesses continue to use it. at said, the phone can be an ef-
fective tool when used wisely in combination with other mar-
keting activities. Ideally, the phone calls should come into your
sales team based on e ective inbound marketing strategies. If
that sounds like a pipe dream (and in some industries, it’s hard
to imagine that ever happening), please be sure to read the case
studies in this book. Engaging your target audience with content
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Marketing 2.0
of interest dramatically increases the chance of getting a return
call when you leave a message. Marketing’s purpose is always to
create sales opportunities. When prospective buyers respond to
an o er, or request information or content through some online
activity, they are inviting the phone call. However, the tone of the
call should be conversational, not sales-oriented. So make sure
the caller is well-quali ed to engage in intelligent conversation.
Your prospect is typically well-informed and generally further
along in the evaluation process than someone who has not done
her homework. e two most important considerations in us-
ing the phone are the way in which you use it: 1) set up a warm
call, and 2) employ quali ed sta that is focused on engaging po-
tential customers in conversations. Develop processes that track
the behavior of your buyers by helping them move further along
their path of evaluation and decision.
• Direct mail. We clutter the mail slots of our prospective custom-
ers with colorful (and not-so-colorful) postcards, letters, and
even more creative, three-dimensional mailers with outdated
calls to action, all in hopes of getting a 1 percent response rate.
at’s right, 1 percent! Now I’m not against direct mail. In fact,
integrating personalized direct mail with personalized web land-
ing pages can be very e ective. If you send a direct mail piece
to me with my photo on the cover, uniquely personalized with
my name in the piece, and invite me to download content that is
uniquely meaningful to me, you can increase your response rates
into the 20 percent and 30 percent range (this is not a typo). Mar-
keters who can pull o highly targeted and personalized direct
mail campaigns combined with measurable online marketing ac-
tivities can get great results. Direct mail should be a component
of your content strategy, not the sole medium. A content focused
mind-set in your direct mail strategy will not only change how
you use direct mail, but also it will also change the way you mea-
sure results.
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Bernie Borges — Marketing 2.0
Marketing 2.0 is a mind-set. Its two pillars are content and relation-
ship-building. It is not a set of tactics. e metrics you use to measure
results or ROI are not the same as those used in years past. e mind-
set of Marketing 2.0 is to determine where your customers and their
surrounding constituents spend time on the web. Once you determine
that, go there to share great content and build relationships with them.
By the way, your target customer shouldn’t be limited to just those who
buy your products. ere are surrounding people who in uence the buy-
ing patterns of your target customers. ey are just as important to your
marketing e orts as your target customer. If you can e ectively engage
these in uential people in meaningful ways, you can earn their trust. e
contemporary buyer is smarter than in years past. She doesn’t have to
put up with your shouting anymore. She simply won’t listen to it. Engage
her. Inform her. Be a friend to her. Win her trust, and you have your best
chance at winning her business.
Next, let’s examine how we evolved to this thing we call the social
web.
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AT  E 2.0 AND
SOCIAL MEDIA?
T
he following story of my early career serves as an analogy to ex-
plain how we got to Web 2.0 and the social media revolution … I
began my career in 1979 in New York, working for Yourdon, Inc.,
where I learned about the art of so ware development. e founder and
CEO of Yourdon, Inc. is Ed Yourdon, a man who literally wrote the book
on how to design so ware using a then-new methodology called Struc-
tured Systems Development (SSD). Yourdon is now in the computer hall
of fame and has authored twenty-seven computer-related books.1
In the 1960s and ’70s, so ware systems were mostly run by midsize
to large corporations on mainframe computers. So ware systems de-
velopment was very labor-intensive and, consequently, very expensive.
erefore, so ware systems were mostly limited to mission-critical ap-
plications such as nancial systems. In simple terms, the idea behind
his SSD methodology was for business analysts to spend a considerable
amount of time de ning the business requirements of a so ware applica-
tion. is was typically accomplished through extensive interviews with
the business users of a new so ware system (the stakeholders), writing
1 Ed Yourdon’s website: http://www.yourdon.com/.
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Bernie Borges — Marketing 2.0
down everything they said was needed in the so ware application. In
Yourdon’s SSD method, diagrams known as data ow diagrams were used
by the business analysts to literally illustrate how the so ware would func-
tion when it was completed. is “picture” allowed the users (who were
mostly non-programmer types) to understand how the interpretation
of their requirements had led to the system-to-be. Eventually, the user
group and the data processing group arrived at a consensus on the speci-
cations of the new so ware application, using the data ow diagrams as
the blueprint. Upon user sign-o , the analysis phase was completed. e
end result of the analysis phase was a de nition of what the system was
intended to accomplish.
Next came the design phase. In this phase, the analysts and engineers
would lay out the structure of the application, de ning how it was going
to programmatically accomplish the overall system requirements. Once
all stakeholders signed o on the design blueprint, the design phase was
completed. e design of the system de ned how the system was going
to be developed. Up until this point, no programming code had yet been
written, which is a stark contrast to the previous method of so ware sys-
tems development.
In the nal phase, the programming code was applied. In this cod-
ing phase, programmers used the design blueprint to write the code that
would actually build the so ware application that addressed the business
requirements de ned in the earlier system analysis.
Back in those days of mainframe and minicomputer so ware de-
velopment, these new structured systems development techniques were
considered revolutionary and a paradigm shi . For the people involved in
the SSD methods, it was a major mind shi . ey were accustomed to do-
ing very limited analysis and a lot of programming. e three phases de-
scribed above became known as structure analysis, structured design, and
structured programming. Prior to these new techniques, approximately
70 percent of a so ware development project time went to programming
(coding). e remaining 30 percent went to analysis and design. Your-
don’s new SSD model turned this paradigm upside down. Under the SSD
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45.
hat s eb 2.0 and Social Media?
model, roughly 70 percent of the time and e ort went into analysis and
design, with the balance going to programming.
e logic inherent in SSD certainly made sense. At the simplest level,
SSD was all about taking the necessary time to clearly de ne the business
problem (what the system is intended to do) and clearly design the solu-
tion (how the system would be built), then writing the code (implemen-
tation of the design blueprint) to develop the so ware. From this new
so ware development model owed many case studies of more e cient
so ware development, mostly characterized by systems that did a bet-
ter job of what the users actually wanted. Most telling was the dramatic
reduction in costs for so ware development, largely due to the lower cost
associated with discovering errors early in the project (analysis or de-
sign), as compared with nding errors later in the programming or test-
ing phases, or once the systems were in use. Most SSD-based so ware
applications were delivered closer to budget and timeline projections, and
that resulted in more satis ed user communities.
So what does any of this have to do with Web 2.0 and social media?
Two things. First, SSD was in actuality So ware Development 2.0. Until
SSD became widely adopted, thanks largely to Yourdon and his trained
disciples who taught the SSD methodology worldwide, So ware Devel-
opment 1.0 was very ine cient and wildly expensive for businesses ev-
erywhere. Yourdon and his SSD methodology turned this upside down!
Second, whenever so ware applications are developed and rolled out,
they are always labeled by a version number. is holds true for so ware
applications developed by businesses for internal use, as well as commer-
cial so ware products developed for sale. Open any so ware application
today, whether it’s a corporate application, one you installed on your per-
sonal computer, or one you accessed over the web, and it will have a ver-
sion number.
Version 1.0 of any so ware application has always been characterized
as being just good enough to launch, far less than perfect. O en, version
1.0 is buggy, bloated, slow, and lacking in needed features. In short, ver-
sion 1.0 is o en not much more than a beta or early release.
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Bernie Borges — Marketing 2.0
However, when we speak of Web 2.0, we are not referring to another
version of the web. So what is Web 1.0 and what is Web 2.0?
When I think of Web 1.0, the rst thing that comes to my mind is a
dial-up connection. Do you remember when you connected to the web
using a modem and a phone line? Argh! It’s laughable now, but those of us
who used dial-up connections to the Internet su ered through very slow
connection and download speeds.
eb 1.0
To understand this concept of Web 1.0, let’s take a quick history lesson on
the formation of the Internet. While Al Gore would like to take credit for
its invention, the Internet’s actual invention dates back to the 1960s. Two
men—Levi Finch and Robert Taylor—developed a movement among
computer professionals to connect computers around the globe. Con-
currently, several research e orts exploring ways to network computers
residing on physically separate computers sprung up, which led to the
development of packet switching. is all happened at a time when com-
puters were typically stand-alone islands of information.
e rst recognized example of a connected network of computers
using packet switching was the Advanced Research Projects Agency Net-
work (ARPANET),2 used by the U.S. Department of Defense. is sys-
tem was the world’s rst operational packet-switching network, widely
recognized as the predecessor to the global Internet we know today. In
1989, Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee, a computer scientist in the Euro-
pean Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva, Switzerland, coined
the term World Wide Web. He has played an active role in developing
many of the web standards still in place such as markup languages and
the World Wide Web Consortium, which oversees the web’s continued
development.
In order for the World Wide Web to be available to the general public,
2 For a full chronology of ARPANET and the history of the Internet visit http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET.
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hat s eb 2.0 and Social Media?
an interface was required. In 1992, Mosaic was developed by the National
Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and released as the
world’s rst commercial browser in 1993. Mosaic was o cially discontin-
ued in 1997, though it can still be downloaded from NCSA.3
e Mosaic browser was the catalyst that accelerated the evolution
of the web and related technologies such as TCP, IP, p | nntp | gopher
| http, URL, and HTML. e next person to come on the scene and ac-
celerate the availability of the web through browser technology was Marc
Andreessen and his Netscape Navigator. Today, the two most popular
web browsers in the world, Firefox and Microso ’s Internet Explorer, still
maintain many of the characteristics of the original Mosaic graphical user
interface (GUI).
he orld as nce Flat
Most websites are still Web 1.0 sites. at is to say that site visitors can-
not interact with the website. e purpose of a Web 1.0 website is to o er
information about a company, organization, or person, typically the web-
site’s owner. Web 1.0 sites are by nature static, read-only websites. All we
can do on these websites is read the content. We cannot become engaged.
Sure, we can o en ll out a form to request information or download
something. But, the primary purpose of these websites is to provide con-
tent to be read and prompt site visitors to take some desired action based
on that content.
hat about commerce ebsites?
Visiting Web 1.0 sites with online catalogs where you can view products,
add them to a shopping cart, and make a purchase is, in essence, a hybrid
experience. It’s mostly a Web 1.0 experience because these websites still
limit our interaction to viewing, reading, and adding comments about a
3 Source: http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/
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Bernie Borges — Marketing 2.0
product we purchased. e ability to comment on products we’ve pur-
chased is where the hybrid aspect comes into play.
he orld eally is ound!
Once our civilization discovered that the world was actually round, it for-
ever changed the way we looked at our planet. More importantly, the dis-
covery made the at world theory obsolete. At this writing, most websites
are still Web 1.0; most sites are limited in their ability to allow visitors to
interact with each other or with the site’s owner.
Here is an example: let’s say your company is a manufacturer of in-
dustrial equipment with annual sales of $10 million. Your Web 1.0 site has
about y pages. You have the standard pages: Home, About Us, Prod-
ucts (with many subpages), Partners, How to Buy, and Contact Us. e
site contains a nicely designed color catalog. Altogether you’ve invested
about $25,000 in website development fees. You also run pay-per-click
(PPC) search marketing campaigns to generate sales leads, with an aver-
age monthly click spend of about $3,000. In a year’s time, you’ve invested
$61,000 in your site. In year two, you don’t have the expense of develop-
ing the website other than some updates costing about $5,000. Assuming
a at PPC marketing spend, your annual spend is $36,000. However, in
year two, you also invested in the services of a search engine optimization
(SEO) rm with a monthly spend of $2,000. In year two, your total invest-
ment in search marketing (paid and SEO) and website maintenance was
$65,000. How do you measure your return on investment (ROI)?
In a Web 1.0 scenario, the only way you can measure ROI is based on
sales generated from your website—period! ere is no other way to mea-
sure ROI. e people who visit your website are handcu ed. You don’t
allow them to interact with you unless they contact you. But you say, I
want them to contact us! I want sales leads! Really? I’ve got news for you:
Most visitors to your Web 1.0 site are not ready to contact you. Why? Be-
cause most visitors want to check you out for some period of time before
they call you or ll out your annoying form where you ask for an email
36

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hat s eb 2.0 and Social Media?
address. To illustrate my point, I ask you: how quickly are you willing to
hand over your email address when you visit a website for the rst time?
Here’s the point: unless your website sells a low price point product,
visitors to your website are mostly there to visit, study, and evaluate you.
ey are not there to buy … at least not yet.
But remember—the only way we can measure ROI for Web 1.0 sites
is based on sales attributed directly to the website. So in a Web 2.0 world,
how do we measure ROI?
eb 2.0
If Web 1.0 is characterized as a at world, then Web 2.0 is characterized as
a round world. If Web 1.0 is read-only, then Web 2.0 is read-write! A Web
2.0 site has these characteristics:
• Visitors can contribute content or comments.
• Visitors can subscribe to your content.
• Visitors can share your content easily with others.
• Visitors can rate your content.
• Visitors can form communities and collaborate with each other.
• Visitors can in uence the opinions of others positively or nega-
tively.
• Visitors can get engaged in productive ways before they are ready
to buy your widget.
• Visitors are not limited to your company website but can also link
to other destinations on the web that interest them.
Web 2.0 is an expression coined by Bill O’Reilly at a conference in
2004. He referred to the next generation of websites where destinations
on the web are interactive, communities are formed online, and relation-
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Bernie Borges — Marketing 2.0
ships occur. e communities formed online are in uential. Content is
created and shared among the community.
Web 2.0 has become synonymous with social media because in a Web
2.0 scenario, the interaction that occurs is social. In fact, the evolution of
web technology into what is known as Web 2.0 is as much a social phe-
nomenon as a technological one. Consider that we are social creatures. We
took social studies class in school. We attend social functions. We work in
social settings, unless you work from home, in which case much of your
social contact is on the web. We eat in restaurants, go to malls, ride buses,
subways, and airplanes, drive on freeways, and, whether we want to or
not, like it or not, we interact socially with other people. ese examples
are things we o en do with little or no choice or thought. However, when
we do participate in a social activity by choice—a cooking class, a martial
arts class, a wedding or a business networking event—we interact with
others. And when we interact in these social settings, we look to interact
with people with whom we have something in common. Sometimes in
these social settings, we have interesting conversations. Sometimes we
make recommendations about restaurants, movies, activities, or products
we like (or dislike). Sometimes we receive similar recommendations from
others. And when these recommendations and opinions are expressed in
social settings among people with whom we have something in common,
a social phenomenon occurs. People very o en listen to these recommen-
dations. In other words, ideas, opinions, and recommendations made in
a social setting among communities of people with similar interests carry
weight—a lot of weight.
What does this have to do with Web 2.0? Everything! While there are
technological advances that have facilitated the rapid adoption of Web
2.0 and social media, the single largest contributing factor to its rapid
growth is the inherent social phenomenon. But wait—what is so phe-
nomenal about that? What’s so surprising about that? Nothing, really. We
are social creatures, remember?
It’s worth noting that not all Web 2.0 applications fall into the cat-
egory of social media. e Web 2.0 applications that are available to the
public are indeed social. However, there is a growing list of private ap-
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51.
hat s eb 2.0 and Social Media?
plications developed by organizations around the world that are also con-
sidered vital parts of Web 2.0. Business applications running as so ware
as a service (SaaS) are Web 2.0 applications, but they are used only by
authorized personnel with a login ID. Some newly developed corporate
websites are Web 2.0 by virtue of their use of Web 2.0 technologies.
Let’s look at how Web 2.0 has created a social media revolution and
its e ect on marketing strategies.
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52.
YE O E 2.0 AND
SOCIAL MEDIA
Y
ou’re probably reading this book because you’ve had some expo-
sure to Web 2.0 or social media terminology. You’ve probably read
about it in mainstream publications such as BusinessWeek, USA
Today, or even your local newspaper or evening television news. Perhaps
you have visited blogs, created a pro le in a social network, or attended
a local seminar or a webinar on the topic. In short, you’ve heard about
social media without searching for it. You may be wondering, Is it hype
or is it really worthwhile? It seems like a waste of time. Can my business (or
career) really bene t from it? I don’t have time for social media, should I?
In this chapter, let’s identify the primary attributes of Web 2.0 so we
can be grounded in the proper terminology and concepts explored here
and in later chapters.
Web 2.0 comprises destinations (websites) on the web that fall into
one of three categories:
• Shared content
• Published content
• Social networking
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53.
ypes of eb 2.0 and Social Media
Below are basic de nitions of each of these terms, as provided by
Wikipedia,1 which is itself one of the most exciting examples of a Web 2.0
so ware application.
Shared content destination sites are those where people share content
with others. One of the most dramatic attributes of social media is that
anyone can share content with anyone else. Indeed, sharing is o en what
popularizes content and creates the so-called viral e ect.
e viral e ect is o en mentioned as one of the most desirable ben-
e ts of social media marketing. When you consider the total amount of
content available in social media, very little actually ever reaches viral
status. However, the viral e ect of content in niche markets can be very
e ective. When content goes viral it means that certain members of an
online community have embraced that speci c content—whether it’s a
blog post, a group, a video—and they tell other community members
about it. e people within that community who see the content then
share it with more people. rough this domino e ect, the content re-
ceives a considerable amount of attention and continues to spread across
the Internet, much like the common cold or u does through society.
Hence the term viral e ect.
However, content doesn’t have to go viral for it to be valuable to the
owner of the content. Over time, producing content that is shared in your
community and attributed back to the author (a person or a company),
contributes to brand reputation (and sales leads).
Examples of public shared content sites include the following:
• Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/
• Digg: http://digg.com/
• Delicious: http://del.icio.us/
• StumbleUpon: http://www.stumbleupon.com/
1 Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
41